A brand campaign that leaves a mark on sales.
A makeup brand with a large community, a low ticket and strong presence in physical retail. The stated objective is reach, and brand media still has to prove it moves something beyond the impression.
The business context
Awareness is usually billed by impression and delivered without consequence. Here the campaign starts with a second question written into the plan: what happens to search and to sales while reach climbs?
Impulse purchase, decided by reference
A lipstick or a palette is decided in seconds, almost always after seeing someone wearing it. Short video is the category’s native format.
Low ticket, full cart
The average item costs R$34 and the order closes at R$128. Someone who arrives for one product leaves with four, which changes the return math.
Exposure turns into demand
In previous flights, every point of incremental reach came with a rise in branded search and in direct sessions to the ecommerce.
Reach is the target, demand is the proof
The contracted KPI is reach at a controlled frequency. Alongside it, the report tracks branded search, direct sessions and ecommerce revenue over the same period.
Frequency gets a ceiling
Past four exposures per person, recall stops growing and cost keeps climbing. The plan caps frequency at 3.4 and buys new reach instead.
Media plan
Goal for the flight: 22M people reached over 8 weeks, at an average frequency of 3.4 and a R$12.00 CPM, supporting an expected 18% lift in branded search.
| Platform | Role | Spend | CPM | Impressions | Reach |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reach volume at a controlled frequency across Reels and Stories | R$378,000 | R$9.80 | 38.6M | 11.3M | |
| YouTube | The full campaign narrative, in a 30-second film | R$252,000 | R$14.50 | 17.4M | 5.2M |
| TikTok | Native format with creators and the campaign’s own sound | R$162,000 | R$11.20 | 14.5M | 4.3M |
| Demand Gen | Product discovery and capture of the demand the campaign creates | R$108,000 | R$24.00 | 4.5M | 1.2M |
| Flight total | R$900,000 | R$12.01 | 74.9M | 22.0M | |
| Scenario | Assumption that changes | Reach | Frequency | Branded search | Ecommerce revenue |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative | CPM rises 25% with Black Friday competition in the auction | 17.6M | 3.4 | +12% | +14% |
| Base case | CPM at the average of the last two flights, with frequency capped | 22.0M | 3.4 | +18% | +22% |
| Optimistic | A creator asset breaks out and lowers TikTok’s effective CPM | 26.4M | 3.2 | +25% | +31% |
Creative brief
In a brand campaign the asset is the product of the media. The brief defines what has to happen in the first three seconds, because that is where reach becomes recall.
- Audience
- Women aged 16 to 29 interested in makeup and beauty, nationwide
- Format
- 9:16 video, 12s, no voiceover
- Specs
- 1080×1920, eight shades applied on different skin tones, a cut every 1.5s
- Hypothesis
- Watching the color go on holds attention better than seeing the product closed in its packaging
First second: a hand applying the shade to skin, in close-up, with no brand card.
The logo appears only in the final two seconds.
- Audience
- Broad reach with beauty affinity, ages 16 to 34
- Format
- 16:9 video, 30s, with a 6s bumper cut
- Specs
- 1920×1080, burned-in captions, brand audible in the first 5s
- Hypothesis
- The full narrative sustains the recall that short form activates
Color asks nobody’s permission.
Eight stories of people who picked the shade before they picked the occasion.
- Audience
- Ages 16 to 24, with 12 mid-tier creators contracted
- Format
- 9:16 video, 15 to 25s, campaign sound
- Specs
- 1080×1920, open brief, no locked script for the creator
- Hypothesis
- An asset that looks like feed content delivers a lower CPM and higher retention than a produced ad
Swap the shade you always wear for the one you never dared.
No before and after. The cut lands at the moment of the swap.
- Audience
- People who watched 75% of any flight asset in the last 14 days
- Format
- 4:5 and 1:1 static showing the exact shade from the video
- Specs
- 1080×1350, shade name and code visible, direct link to the product page
- Hypothesis
- The brand campaign creates demand for a specific shade, and something has to be there to capture it
It is 04 Cherry, the shade from the video.
Available online and at 2,400 retail doors.
| Format | Cut-off metric | Floor | Reading window |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3-second retention | 32% | After 500K impressions | |
| YouTube 30s | View-through rate | 22% | After 300K impressions |
| TikTok | Average watch time | 6.5s | After 400K impressions |
Delivery dashboard
Week 5 of 8. The dashboard shows the contracted indicator, reach, next to the metrics that prove consequence: branded search and ecommerce revenue.
| Campaign | Platform | Spend | Impressions | Reach | Freq. | CPM | VTR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Swatch in eight shades | R$236,000 | 24.1M | 7.4M | 3.3 | R$9.79 | 28.1% | |
| The campaign film | YouTube | R$158,000 | 10.9M | 3.9M | 2.8 | R$14.50 | 24.6% |
| The swap challenge | TikTok | R$101,000 | 9.0M | 3.1M | 2.9 | R$11.22 | 31.4% |
| Found your shade? | Demand Gen | R$67,000 | 1.9M | 0.8M | 2.4 | R$35.26 | 19.8% |
| Running total through week 5 | R$562,000 | 45.9M | 14.8M | 3.1 | R$12.25 | 26.4% | |
The read this week
- The brand campaign is paying for conversion without a conversion budget. Ecommerce revenue is up 31% against the prior period, with only 12% of the budget in capture formats. That is the argument that funds the next flight.
- TikTok delivers the highest retention and the second-lowest CPM. The open-brief creator asset retained 31.4%, almost three points above the produced Reels. The recommendation is to widen the creator roster instead of producing another studio asset.
- Demand Gen is expensive for the role it plays. R$35.26 CPM for 0.8M reach. Since its job is capture rather than reach, the metric it should be judged on is qualified sessions, and on that measure the cost holds up.
- Decision taken to the client: move R$40K from YouTube to TikTok across the remaining three weeks, keeping the film live at a lower frequency, and hold the frequency cap at 3.4 to protect new reach through the end of the flight.